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kastababy writes "In yet another instance of up-and-coming browser developers fighting back against the Microsoft behemoth, the makers of Opera have filed a complaint with the European Union against Microsoft. In their complaint, they allege that IE's 77% market share abuses its dominant position by tying IE to Windows and its refusal to accept Web standards, causing significant interoperability issues. The complaint also requests that the EU's Antitrust Division force Microsoft to separate IE from Windows and accept several different standards, thereby resolving major interoperability issues and providing consumers more choice in the browser market."Update: 12/14 19:47 GMT by Z: We also discussed this yesterday.

Microsoft is the one company that comes up with new standards, most of them poor. However, they are also the ones who are the worst at following well established standards, as well as adapting to new commonly accepted ones. For example, when do you think IE will support SVG without any 3rd party plugins?

That was only from the first result page using keywords address book import error... If they can't standardize on a way to store contact information, can you even claim that microsoft makes *standards*? There is nothing standardized in that company. Show me a single nontrivial webpage with CSS that looks the same in IE 5,6 and 7 WITHOUT any nonstandard hacks. Even when following Microsofts own guidelines, or software that is not possible.

And MS has decided to go with the MS Word HTML rendering engine for Outlook 2007. What a terrible piece of crap that is. Just when we thought they were making some headway with IE7, they go and pull this stunt. I'm not the biggest fan of HTML email, but making a move like this is just terrible.

Actually, IE7 is a step backwards. I work in software support for a large computer manufacturer. You would not believe the amount of calls we get from people who downgraded from IE6 to IE7 and IE7 suddenly stops working. Granted it has the reset button which is a step forward, but sometimes that too fails. No amounts of registry edits, or system restore gets it working. It stops. We install Firefox and the customer is happy.Now that I think of it, our team should really be getting some ffox swag. A t-shirt

They could at least be in the same ballpark as other browsers...And should definitely be required to fix bugs (bugs defined where behaviour differs from the published standard) for free and within a reasonable time frame.Perhaps make them implement any standard feature which is implemented by at least 2 other browsers.

My experience differs. I wonder if you have corrupted fonts on your machine or some such thing and it isn't really the fault of Firefox. I'm using the Firefox 3 prerelease "Minefield" right now to write this reply and I've been using it as my main browser for some time now. I have found very few bugs in it and it's at least as stable as any shipping version of IE.

Perhaps make them implement any standard feature which is implemented by at least 2 other browsers.

That's a pretty good idea on the surface, but just like adhering to the published standard I think it'd be hard to enforce. Decoupling IE from Windows would be a huuuuuuuge step; Microsoft abandoning it would be an even better step. What would replace it, though? I think that's the biggest problem: the fact that IE is so deeply tied into Windows that no browser could at this point take its place and it can never be removed without serious changes to the way the operating system works.

You are making the classic mistake of comparing goods and services where choice has little or no consequence to utility value with those which have come to be regarded as (standardized) utilities. Whether your car has an iPod connection or not doesn't change it's utility in taking you from A to B, whereas different electricity companies each using different mains plugs, voltages and AC frequencies would severely impact the utility of your laptop (assuming it didn't come with a Christmas tree of power plugs

would make it kind of irritating to get any browser. You can't really tell them they have to provide a browser written by a competitor, so how would people go to websites to download the browser they want?

I, personally, have no qualms with Microsoft shipping IE with Windows. It is their product, after all. BUT they should give OEMs the option to strip it out and replace it with Firefox/Opera/Safari/K-Meleon if they so desire. Which, really, is what this is all about.

They should, at the very least, make IE an optional installation and provide the ability to uninstall it after it has been installed. Since they're considered a monopoly, I don't think it would be too off-base to require them to provide at least two alternative browsers with the Windows install disk.

IMO, the way to go would be for Microsoft to just make IE an optional component. That way it's still on the install disc for people building their own systems (assuming they haven't already grabbed an installer for some browser via another computer), and it's easy to leave it out and put something else on instead.

I dislike microsoft for a lot of things, but coupling IE isn't one of them. I don't think it's bs that it is well integrated into the OS. Just stick to standards. And I don't see what would really motivate OEMs to bundle a different browser.

And on the other side of the fence, try and remove konqueror from kde.

And on the other side of the fence, try and remove konqueror from kde.

OK, emerge -C konqueror. It's removed. I've run KDE without konqueror installed. Other packages can provide a file/Internet browser. In the case of Microsoft, I'd like to see a pluggable rendering engine. Sure, a lot of things are tied to the rendering engine. Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer, Help, and the desktop are just a few. Now, imaging if you could uninstall IE's rendering engine and replace it with the Gecko or KHTML engine. That is what I'd like to see. That would be competition without removi

Or Mac OS. Safari is one thing, but consider webkit. Things like help wouldn't work if you removed it. I don't see opera insisting that they can be shipped on iPhones or Macs. Many websites do not work with safari. Either is strict about standards or they have a buggy browser as well. Similarly, most linux distros and even some BSD systems ship with browsers. Most people consider it part of the OS these days. If it doesn't "do" the Internet, it's not a computer. Will Opera complain that Dells shipping with ubuntu must include Opera? How about freedos?

It doesn't mean not ship with a browser. It means the ability to un-install/get rid of IE without breaking windows so an OEM can for example do a deal with Opera to have their browser as default instead of IE.

It doesn't mean not ship with a browser. It means the ability to un-install/get rid of IE without breaking windows so an OEM can for example do a deal with Opera to have their browser as default instead of IE.

Try looking in the control panel in Windows XP - go to add/remove programs, then click on the link at the left that says "Program access and defaults".

OEMs already have the ability to ship a configuration with a default browser/mail/media player that is different from IE/OE/WMP. It doesn't uninstall IE, but it makes the other programs the default.

MS could simply supply Firefox, the adware version of Opera, and any other free browsers along with its decoupled IE. When installing Windows the user would have the choice of browsers, including no browser at all, as not all computers need to be on the internet. You could also uninstall any of them at will should decide to buy the 4 CD box set MEGABWOWSER.

Easy. Just have them provide IE, then force them to open up to other companies (like Opera, Firefox, etc.) that can pay them a reasonable fee to include their browser with the operating system. This way you don't get a bazillion browsers included on the desktop of the PC, but you still have open competition. The fee should be "reasonable" as in "reasonable enough that open-source operations like Firefox can afford to pay it".

As part of the installation, Microsoft Windows could provide the user with a radio-button list of possible browsers they can install, and the option of "other" where they can enter a URL to a direct download. The list of browsers, and "other" could be downloaded through a utility similar to wget in Linux from the commandline via a system call.
That way the user can pick what they want, but the binaries for the browsers aren't actually provided on the Windows CD.
Not that hard.

"IE is inseperable from Windows"
This is one of my favorites.
Integrating a web browser into the os?
This makes Windows the stupidest operating system ever or MS the biggest bunch of lying asshats ever, or both.
You decide.

Really, it all starts with getting rid of the damned thing in the first place--End 6!

Hey, thanks for posting that. I've seriously been planning to set up an "upgrade or switch" page focusing on IE6, and it looks like you (or whoever built the site, if it's not you) have beat me to it. I'm not thrilled about the big annoying pop-up method, though.

Operatic. I hope this brings about an Operatic deneument to the internet exploder...

I'd offer the suggestion that pithy comments meant to appeal to the erudite Slashdot reader will, when containing spelling [reference.com] errors, most likely miss their target audience, but first, I'd have to resolve the paradox of your "operatic denouement" construct, or entertain the grim prospects of my head exploding.

What everybody seems to misunderstand is that as a world wide monopoly, Microsoft is supposed to act in a responsible way so as not to inhibit the growth of competition. Unfortunately, that is exactly what Microsoft does at every turn.By denying access to it's communication protocols, Microsoft inhibits competition for network services.

By creating media formats that are secret and proprietary it inhibits competition for media creation and playback.

What everybody seems to misunderstand is that as a world wide monopoly, Microsoft is supposed to act in a responsible way so as not to inhibit the growth of competition.

At the same time, there's nothing preventing them from simply outcompeting their competition. Opera has to prove that MS is doing something unfair, and including a browser with their OS probably doesn't cut it. Nor does interpreting HTML in a slightly different way.

By creating a browser that is non-standard it skews the entire browser

Since MS has over 80% of the market share, one could easily say they are the de-facto standard and if Opera doesn't like it

Web standards are not defined by Microsoft.

they can interpret pages how MS does.

Not only does IE not interpret things to what is considered standards, but it also uses Microsoft's own incompatible technologies that prevent other browsers and operating systems from adopting them. Additionally, with Microsoft being the 'standard' in this case, this makes it impossible for the industry to grow without Microsoft creating more 'standards'.

Additionally, the ultimate fault is with web developers - if they cared about Opera's users, they'd test their pages on it. They don't, and that tells you all you need to know.

It isn't about caring. Opera will render standard compliant pages well, period. IE does not work with standard compliant pages - hell, it can't even do HTMLv2 properly. When you have to support a browser that is used by the majority in such a way that it makes it very difficult to support browsers which are standards compliant, the web developer can be forced due to other constraints (time, money, more effort) to just not support them. If a web developer could write for a standard and have browsers just work with them (it's rare that you will find standards compliant pages that do not work between firefox, safari, opera etc), it would be fine.

That's not happening here. Equating the use of proprietary file formats and non-comformity to "standards" that some group has adopted with anticompetitive practices is ludicrous.

Considering the fact a web browser is supposed to browse the web, the web having a standard that programs are supposed to follow to make it work. Microsoft taking this standard, breaking it and then adding their own proprietary additions, gaining control of the majority of the web 'market', leaving little choice to web developers when they develop new web sites.

I don't know if you recall the purpose of the web. But it's main goal and design is meant be a cross-platform, cross-architecture design for handling content on the "world wide web" - granting access to all who adhere to the recommendations/standards from the formation of standard organizations such as the w3c, ISO/IEEE and others. Microsoft has broken the design of the web in ways that I consider is anti-competitive.

Embrace, break standards (so other software does not work well with Microsoft's implementation) and extend with proprietary lock-ins.

No, seriously--this is great! This looks interesting but I'm mainly interested in the discussion here. (I've got my ideas; I'm curious how other people see it.) It just so happens I was pretty busy yesterday and didn't catch this story. Now I don't have to wait an hour for there to be a good number of +5 comments--I can just check out yesterday's! Thanks, Slashdot!Dupes: they're not a bug, they're a feature!:-)

My opinion, in case anyone cares: I dislike MS and IE as much as anyone else here, but I think O

if MS did make a feature-full, standards-compliant browser, wouldn't that lower Opera usage?

Not necessarily. End users don't pick their browsers for standards compliance. They do pick them by questions like, "Does this browser work with my bank's website?"

If the most-used browser (IE or otherwise) is fully standards-compliant, that lowers the bar for developers to build sites that work with multiple browsers: target standards and you get something that works in IE8, Firefox, Safari, Opera, etc., instead of targeting IE6, tweaking for IE7, tweaking for Firefox, and deciding anyone running another browser is just SOL.

End result: More websites are compatible across the board, so when people try Opera, fewer of them will run it for 2 days and say, "Well, I sorta like it, but the POS browser can't handle my favorite website. I'm going back to IE."

I agree with improving the browser and following the standards, but why ask to untie Windows and IE?, what about MacOS X and Linux? Linux and MacOS X are slowly getting market share from Windows and seems like this isn't going to stop, so why should Microsoft sell an OS without a web browser, why punish a company out to extinction? Is just because it isn't European? I understand Opera asking to make IE standards complaint, but what business do they have with the OS?

I agree with improving the browser and following the standards, but why ask to untie Windows and IE?

Because it is illegal to tie a product you have monopolized to one in a different market.

...what about MacOS X and Linux?

It is illegal for them to tie products in markets they have monopolized with one in a different market. That is why the EU is investigating Apple's market share with the iPod (since they are close to having monopoly influence in that market) and may force them to remove the ties between the iPod and the ItTunes store and iTunes software.

why should Microsoft sell an OS without a web browser

Because it has destroyed both the market for Web browsers and slowed progre

Opera is doomed in its mission of a lawsuit. However, it's the best of the three browsers out there.As I explain in detail here [slashdot.org], the issue is more complicated than most people see.

Most of us don't fit into these two sides:

1. We hate the big guy side -- Firefox is God, Linux is God, they can do no wrong, the world will be saved if we go to Linux/FF.2. We distrust the little guy side -- Firefox is funded by Google, Firefox is a revenge project against MSFT, you get uneven results in open source, the world wil

Are you using an insanely old version of Opera, or are you of the delusional "IE dictates the standards, screw everything else" crowd? I ask because I can't see any other reasons why you'd suggest that it makes cross-browser testing painful. The last few versions of Opera have been wonderful in terms of adhering to W3C standards. I'm not an Opera fan by a longshot -I find the name annoying, I have a fairly severe loathing for people who tout it as the second coming, and it doesn't have Firebug- but testing in it is part of my QA cycle, and generally speaking, if markup validates, things tend to render as expected in Opera.

I am against adding hacks to my web site to make my site work with IE6 or 7 or any browser for that matter. I strongly feel that if you follow well established web standards your site will work on any browser.

Well once you're in the real world and your job depends on the site you're building working in IE you'll change your tune.. or find other employment. If it doesn't look right in IE, you can't ignore it, like it or not.

Yeah but I was a very awesome user of Opera, your two computer mobile device and brother in law are far to make up for it. In fact, unless you manage to package Opera with Storm, there's not much you can do.

If there is a finer mobile browser on the market I have yet to experience it. Additionally, can you name another browser with supported releases that run on any web enabled device from game consoles to personal computers?

Opera's gripe may superficially appear to be the coupling of current web content with Internet Explorer, but really their complaint is the coupling of the web with computers. I mean, come on! Who wants to fork out for a PC just to browse the web and send emails? But right now, that's what you've got to do, because the threads of the web aren't as closely tied if you're not on Windows..

While webpages are written for a non-compliant PC-based browser, instead of to the agreed standards, the in

No, I'm pissed that because of Microsoft's anti-competitive practices, web developers have to spend 5x more time and effort than they should because they can't code to the W3C standards for HTML and CSS. I'm pissed that because of this, many lazy web developers have chosen to only support the one major browser that doesn't conform to standards, which means I can't necessarily use the browser I want.

I don't think so. They're just coming into their own, as a light and fast mobile browser. I use Opera Mini all the time on my XDA, it makes mobile web browsing less of an annoyance and more of a useful tool.

Last time I checked, it's pretty easy for people with any kind of preference to install windows, use IE once to download Firefox/Opera/Lynx/etc. and delete all shortcuts to IE, never to be seen again (except maybe for Windows Update). Are we really saying that IE's significant majority in the browser market is wholly due to people's apathy/stupidity?

This will probably result in a number of death threats, but, I've tried Firefox, Safari, Opera, and Netscape and I still choose to use IE7. Yeah, the other

Wrong. MSIE has always been a driving force behind and an early adopter of web standards - they just don't seem to be able to finish, and never go back and fix their old stuff. IE isn't a money-maker for MS, so they dont' throw money at it. IMHO, they should open the code and let the community have at it, with them for oversight. MSIE is a very visible part of Windows, and leveraging the community like that to polish their image would be a brilliant move.

They won't. The whole point of IE was to build a browser that would be incompatible with standards and tied to Microsoft's OS. They didn't go through all that trouble to kill Netscape just because they thought it'd be fun. They did it to stall the growth of the Web. Microsoft was seriously worried that Netscape's vision of thin-client linux-like boxes running just a web browser becoming the new standard for computers. But more importantly they were worried that they would get 95% of the marketshare in this new world.

Microsoft will fight tooth and nail to keep IE closed source so that they can continue to use it strategically to throw a wrench into the standards. As long as stuff doesn't quite work right on IE and IE is the majority browser Microsoft can continue to stall and delay anything that challenges their dominance.

It's depressing that this paranoid fantasy won you positive mod points.On and off over the years I've had occasion to work with Microsoft developers on various things. At one point I worked with the COM team and the IE team for several months. I didn't work for MS, I worked for a company that had discovered a weird and complicated bug. "They" are just a bunch of guys, regular programmers, just like you find at every other big company in the world. Nobody has a secret evil plan. It just doesn't exist. They b

Opera's developers need to admit that their "standards" are nothing but the constructs of the companies who failed to challenge IE so they took their ball and went home. "I'm going to invent my own internet. That'll show those meanies"

You are aware that Microsoft is a member of the W3C [w3.org], right? And that they contributed to the development of such standards as CSS2? And that Microsoft pledged to support these standards back in 1998, and yet somehow their competitors support considerably more parts of that spec than they do? (I suspect ceasing all development other than security fixes for 3-4 years had quite a bit to do with that.)

A bunch of companies didn't get together and say, "We don't like how Microsoft does the web, let's design another one." A bunch of companies including Microsoft got together and said, "Here's how we're going to design the web," Microsoft signed off on it, and then went off in their own direction.

No, the "IE won and thus reigns king" crowd needs to accept that IE doesn't even have its own set of standards and that this is the real root of the problem. Version to version, we see some bugs fixed, some bugs ignored, and wholly *new* ones appear. When you do a QA cycle on a site and find that IE6 actually renders something mostly okay while it totally breaks in IE7, you can see how ridiculous this is.

Yes, it's a tremendous pain in the ass when there's a standard everybody else either complies with or at least makes a sincere effort to comply with, but when the one player who doesn't follow it doesn't even prove itself to be consistent internally, the resulting product is worthless. They don't even provide any documentation as to what coding standards *should* be followed for their browser; this is why they outright recommend conditional comments [microsoft.com] as a fix for (qutoing them) "pages that display correctly in browsers other than Internet Explorer."

Now, you can either keep lying to yourself, or you can accept the fact that IE is crap and in need of either serious repair or published documentation of how to code for it, and will remain crap until such a time.

In reality, people can just code for IE and ignore the other browsers and hit most of the web.

Sure they can. Except coding for IE alone is still a bitch, and ignoring other browsers is incredibly naive as IE no longer holds 95%+ dominance as it once did. In reality, these people are stupid as far as creating web content goes.

The only instance where this is an acceptable practice in business terms is when the client specifically says, "compatibility with anything other than IE is not necessary" - eithe

I actually gave opera a try yesterday because of this articles first round on the/. mainpage. nothing to do with the politics, just wanted to try it out because its free [as in beer] and cross platform. the browser itself seemed pretty solid compared to other browsers out of the box capabilities. it was fast and lightweight and the phonebook is kinda cool. however I found "content blocker" to be an annoyance now that I am used to adblock plus keeping its list up to date for me. the ability to control scrip

"I understand that IE isn't a particularly 'safe' browser, but isn't that more because it makes more sense for hackers and whatnot to go after IE users because they account for a larger portion of the market share?"For that to be true, both browsers would need to be built using the same methodology, programming skill, management techniques and the same post-release customer response.

Keep this in mind:There is notoriety in cracking into systems that are considered secured.

Apple's second system could be the BSD system that that it is based on.

But the idea is to limit the current oligopoly, so the regulation should probably state that a computer with specifically Windows pre-installed should have a second operating system. No use hitting Apple which isn't an oligopoly.

You missed some of the point. Actually, you missed most of the meat of the point. The 77% market share and lack of separation is only as big issue an issue because Microsoft refuses to implement proper web standard compliance in their browsers, and that forces programmers (who want their site to be seen properly by IE users) to program non-spec compliant code in conjunction with the spec-proper code for the _real_ browsers on the internet.